Battle for Azeroth Preview: World of Warcraft Communities

Blizzard has released a preview of Communities, a new feature coming with the Battle for Azeroth pre-patch that allows you to create multiple groups and access them all in a very neat window! \r\rWe have previously covered the Communities and Guild UI, both available for testing on both Beta and the 8.0 PTR. Click here for more information on the new system!\r\rWith the Battle for Azeroth pre-patch, we\u2019re introducing World of Warcraft Communities, a new feature that will let you create, manage, and join multiple groups of friends and family. Whether you have a dedicated group that just likes to role-play, a group that is all about pet battling, or another that is focused on Mythic dungeons, Communities will allow you to bring them all together\u2014no matter what realms they\u2019re on. Not only will you be able to participate in a variety of Community groups, but you\u2019ll be able to maintain your membership in your guild at the same time.\r\r\rYou can create and manage a World of Warcraft Community through the Guilds & Communities tab (J), where you\u2019ll also have access to Blizzard Groups. Blizzard Groups allow you to connect with cross-game friends and other players even beyond World of Warcraft via the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app; Communities are specific to the character you\u2019re creating the community with and are great for bringing together in-game friends.\r\rCommunities you create are open to same-faction characters from any realm within your region. You\u2019ll be able to invite characters directly, provide a code, or send an invitation link to those you would like to invite to your newly-created community. You\u2019ll also be able to create calendar events specific to your community and use Quick Join to hop into groups together.\r\rAs a part of this new feature, players will also be able to take part in Community-specific chat (text and voice), create and manage channels, and easily switch between them right within the Community interface. The new feature also provides a chat history, which we\u2019re also bringing to guild chat.\r\r\rWorld of Warcraft Communities will be available soon, with the Battle for Azeroth pre-patch\u2014stay tuned for more information.\r\rYou can learn more about how to create and manage your Communities in our support article . For additional troubleshooting help with joining a World of Warcraft Community or Guild chat, visit our support site.\r\r\r\rAccording to Ion Hazzikostas on his recent interview with Forbes, the Communities feature is not meant to be a replacement for Discord, but rather a complementary tool to easily form in-game groups without needing to leave the game to chat with others:\r\rIt\u2019s more about lowering barriers and adding convenience. The one thing Discord can\u2019t do is let you right click invite someone to your party from it. That sort of thing.\r\rWhen we talk about voice chat, okay, it\u2019s cool, but if you\u2019re joining a group finder group to do arenas, to do Mythic+, someone can say, here\u2019s my Skype, here\u2019s my Discord, here\u2019s my Mumble server. But that\u2019s a lot of hoops to jump though. It often leads to it just not happening.\r\rCompare that to just pushing a button and doing voice chat together. Similarly, this is a great tool for people to cement organic relationships that they make while playing the game. You join a weekend heroic raid, they will likely end up having a community that they use with a calendar associated with it to track the events and keep track of that. It\u2019s a very WoW-centric implementation

Comments

Comment by Matsen115

Comment by BulmaRO

i would love a chat overlay like Recently deceased Raptr used to have, Trillian also has or at least had it, came handy when chatting to people not in wow at the moment.

Comment by Cyberium

on 2018-07-11T13:11:53-05:00

So many guilds could work together within this system, a must for RPers.

Comment by GalenTheGrey

on 2018-07-11T13:15:17-05:00

So many guilds could work together within this system, a must for RPers.\r\rDude, I know! My sister guild and my own can finally communicate in-game easy!

Comment by ZerOrbit

on 2018-07-11T13:17:16-05:00

Guild chats will have chat history now! No more talking behind guildies backs.

Comment by Wolfspirit1993

on 2018-07-11T13:19:35-05:00

The UI for the guild roster has been changed completely to show more information. Yes, the UI is larger however not to the point where it is annoying to look upon. In fact everything appears to have a greater overview.\r\rTo the right of the image you are able to see the guild you are in at the top, as well as the communities you may have joined. There is currently an unlimited amount of communities you can join or create, and all you need to do is click their icon\/name and you will be in it to write or talk.\r\rWhen going to the information screen. That to has been changed slight to give a better overview. With the wide screen you no longer need to scroll down to check the guild progress or be able to read information and message of the day. It is also here you find the guild settings for the things such ranks, permissions and banks. Now the only thing that has changed in the setting is the Rank permissions. As one of the tick-offs are now directly known as "Is officer"\r\rThen there is Chat functions. It's an entirely separate window of writing to the guild but can still be seen and written in your general chat down in the left corner. The new chat tap inside the guild manager however offers multiple functions. One of the functions are that messages are being saved. Meaning that you can read back what you said even if your logged off the night before. Not only that, it also updates you with the messages that people has been writing while you were offline. Meaning, that the officers can read back should there be an issue that needs to have the knowledge of what happened while they were offline.\r\rIt is also possible to create separate guild chats inside the guild chat, be it for ranks, or divisions. There is the notification system that notisfy you when something "Significant" happens in the guild. A new member, someone leaving, achievements and the like. Something you can toggle on and off. where you yourself decide which chat you can get notifications from.\r\rThere has also been added a voice chat to the communities and the guilds. This means that even if you don't skype or discord, you are able to join calls over the ingame chat and talk with others in the same chat. There is as well call chats for raids, and parties. The chats as well are specific to the chat you choose to go into. Meaning if you are wanting to talk with people in your raid, you can do that without worrying that those in your guild or community can hear you and that you may disturb them; they can't and you don't disturb them.\r\rTo join a community or invite, you can either get a link you need to write down into link field when clicking the "Join or create a community" or someone with a leader role, can invite you to the community. The links has 50 uses until it resets.

Comment by Nzall

on 2018-07-11T13:26:00-05:00

Do Communities fall under the WoW Code of Conduct?\r\rThey most likely will. Guild chat also falls under the WoW CoC, but few people ever report someone for verbal manslaughter in a guild.\r\rSummarized: if it's communication in WoW, it's covered by the code of conduct.

Comment by Morodin

on 2018-07-11T13:37:09-05:00

Looking forward to this. Alot of options

Comment by Jetfyre

on 2018-07-11T13:50:37-05:00

Wow this seems so cool! Does this mean you can technically join multiple guilds now?

Guilds, as a whole, have needed this overhaul as they're not the same as they once were. Times changing, as it were.

Comment by Zaphbot

on 2018-07-11T13:50:54-05:00

So many guilds could work together within this system, a must for RPers.

Could also imagine that there will be a lot of fun flashmob communities like that Gnome Racing stuff that was organized in the forums (and later even got a mini-holiday).I think that Communities and the ingame voice chat are some really major features of BFA (where people say it has no big features).

Comment by omedon666

on 2018-07-11T13:52:37-05:00

I\u2019m tellin\u2019 ya, if the faction wall is going to logistically soften, it will start here. Raid and dungeon achievements can likely easily be applied to community based groupings, and everything about communities is opt-in and non-mandatory. Flip a switch because something happens in the story (or \u201cbecause it\u2019s just time\u201d) and they become the faction agnostic hivemind creating RP, raid recruitment and dungeoning opportunities for all, faction be damned!\r\rI fail to see a downside here! People that don\u2019t want to interact with the other faction can stay in faction anchored communities and guilds, it\u2019s all so simple! One switch, and the option becomes just that!

Comment by Cavalier196

on 2018-07-11T14:05:48-05:00

I still can't tell from this preview whether Community chat can output to the in-game chat window (either by default or with an add-on) or if it's limited to the huge interface panel shown here. Anyone that tested it in beta have any insights?

Comment by Keyboardturner

on 2018-07-11T14:10:00-05:00

There is a crucial flaw Blizzard needs to be made aware of with Communities, however. If you kick somebody, they can just join back instantly, and there is no way to ban somebody permanently. Hopefully Blizzard realises this soon. :(

Comment by Keyboardturner

on 2018-07-11T14:12:04-05:00

I still can't tell from this preview whether Community chat can output to the in-game chat window (either by default or with an add-on) or if it's limited to the huge interface panel shown here. Anyone that tested it in beta have any insights?

The community interface can optionally output messages into the ingame chat window.

Comment by Keeyla

on 2018-07-11T14:14:02-05:00

b i g m o o \r\rI'm really excited to see how this will work when it's running. I'm on an RP server where RP is mostly niche and\/or guild-contained so it'll be nice to have these! We have community world channels on both factions but this just seems much snappier.

Comment by Cavalier196

on 2018-07-11T14:16:50-05:00

I still can't tell from this preview whether Community chat can output to the in-game chat window (either by default or with an add-on) or if it's limited to the huge interface panel shown here. Anyone that tested it in beta have any insights?\r\r\rThe community interface can optionally output messages into the ingame chat window.\r\rBrilliant. Thanks much.

Comment by Draccy

on 2018-07-11T14:18:38-05:00

This is great. Pet battle communities, secret finding communities, roleplaying servers...\rHope it all works out.

Comment by chiliflavor

on 2018-07-11T14:49:22-05:00

Great! No more hassle of logging into discord haha. Thanks!

Comment by omedon666

on 2018-07-11T15:10:04-05:00

I wonder: Can a blizzard group (not WoW community, the game-agnostic group) allow the members of a pair of RL friends cross faction sister guilds to chat in the main chat bar with this new interface?

Comment by munga23

on 2018-07-11T15:28:16-05:00

This is so exciting. My guild and all my server friends are very much looking forward to these changes and additions.